The Last of Their Race

by Annie S. Swan

"Well, you see, we are not a writing family, and I was so long abroad that we got a little out of touch," said Malcolm lamely again.

Vivien was fully conscious that there was evasion in the answer, but it was not her business to probe into depths with which she had no personal concern.

Quite suddenly Malcolm stood still on the road and looked at her straightly with a kind of dull fire in his eyes.

"Vivien, I must speak! I haven't the right, for there is very little I have to offer you. But I love you as my own soul--no, as some higher thing, for my soul is a poor thing to mate with yours. Will you--will you--be my wife?"

He had often anticipated this hour and had conned in secret the phrases in which he would plead with this woman for his very life.

But all the fine, set phrases fell away from him and left him bare, so that he could only blurt out his immense desire in words that had no grace of diction to commend them. Yet they were warmed by an honest passion, and they reached the heart of the woman to whom they were spoken and awoke some response in her eyes.

But she put up her hand as if she would ward off that which she feared.

"Oh, don't!" she said rather brokenly. "I don't want to hear it. I--I am afraid!"

"Afraid of what?" he asked.

And a new-born tenderness enveloped him and lifted him up from base depths to the full height of the manhood that ought to have been his had he not trailed his heritage in the dust. "Not afraid of me, my--my--darling?" he said, and it was as if the torrent was let loose. "Listen. This once will I speak, and then be silent, if you bid me, for ever. I am not worthy of you. No man could be--but I am less worthy than most. Yet if you would stoop and give the chance to prove what a man might be and could be for your sake I should worship you to the last day of my life and make your happiness, and that only, my chiefest care. For God's sake, don't send me away! At least give me a crumb of comfort. If I had but known there was a woman like you somewhere in the world--my God, if I had only known!"